This week (20-26 November) is the International Week of Action Against the Militarisation of Youth. During the week activists from various countries will be taking actions and organising events to raise awareness of how the military and military values are promoted to young people, and how we can challenge it.

In Israel, activists from the Mesarvot network - a solidarity network supporting political conscientious objectors in Israel - is organising a demonstration in Tel Aviv in support of the young refuser, Matan Hellman, who's declaring his conscientious objection on 20th November.

This year the Army’s goal is to recruit 80,000 active duty and reserve soldiers. The Navy is trying to sign up 42,000; the Air Force is looking for 27,000, and the Marines hope to bring on 38,000. That comes to 187,000. The Army National Guard will also attempt to lure 40,000.

The arms and fossil fuels industries are putting a lot of resources into science and engineering educational material for British school children. We should be very concerned, argues Philip Wood, SGR.

In 2007 the head of the Army’s recruitment strategy stated, “Our new model is about raising awareness, and that takes a ten-year span. It starts with a seven-year-old boy seeing a parachutist at an air show and thinking, ‘That looks great.’ From then the Army is trying to build interest by drip, drip, drip.” Industries, crucially the arms and fossil fuels industries, are attempting to do exactly the same thing. They are using the notion of a skills shortage in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) to provide STEM ‘enrichment activities’ as a way of getting in front of and influencing a captive audience of impressionable children.

As part of the Global Day of Action on Military Spending, Hamushim activists from Israel delivered hundreds of protest letters to the Technion, a public research university based in Haifa and Tel Aviv, calling on the university authorities to stop their course on arms trade, “Defense Strategy for International Markets”.

The Technion, Israel's leading academic institution, now offers this course for arms exporters and executives in the defense industry. It's designed to upgrade their knowledge and expertise specifically regarding the international arms trade, and to teach them how to form a strategy for arms exports for international markets. After demonstrating at the Tel Aviv campus where the course takes place, activists delivered protest letters signed by hundreds to the Technion on Monday this week.

In the Czech Republic soldiers have reportedly started touring elementary schools nationwide in an effort to introduce students to military life. Children from the age of 10 are being familiarized with and encouraged to play with machine guns. These terrifying images bring memories of totalitarian regimes, in which education about war and a militaristic vision of society and life were instilled into children from a young age.

All of this, moreover, is taking place right at a time when the United States has yet again witnessed a mass shooting that took place in a school and the President himself is impotent to act against the powerful arms industry. According to the Gun Violence Archive, in 2015 alone gun-related incidents in the US amounted to 33,293. 8,514 people lost their lives and 17,361 were injured. Among the dead there were 486 children under the age of 11 and 1,687 between 12 and 17. Is this the model we want to follow?

Petitions committee seeks further round of evidence on military targeting young people

THE CAMPAIGN FOR TRANSPARENCY over military targeting of young people will receive further attention from the Scottish Parliament’s petitions committee.

A short session on the issue was held today [Thursday 24 November] at the Scottish Parliament, with the decision taken to seek further evidence on how military careers visits to schools impacts on military targeting of teenagers for recruitment into the armed forces.

Campaign groups Forces Watch and Quakers in Scotland brought the petition forward, receiving over 1000 signatures and a range of high profile political backers.

The committee, composed of five MSPs, decided to seek further evidence on the issue, despite objections to the petition from the group’s two Tory representatives.

The Student Parliament (StuPa) of Humboldt University (HU) in Berlin voted on November 21 to oppose any Bundeswehr (armed forces) advertising at the university. The motion was tabled by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) chapter at Humboldt.

The StuPa adopted the resolution by a large majority: 19 voted in favor, six against and seven abstained. The resolution reads: “The Student Parliament rejects all forms of advertising for the Bundeswehr at our institution and calls on the Berlin Students Union and the University administration not to allow advertising by the Bundeswehr on the campus of HU.”

Activists in South Korea organised a direct action against the arms expo "DX Korea" sponsored by the Republic of Korea Army(ROKA).

DX Korea, organised for the second time this year, is similar to "Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (Seoul ADEX)" but smaller in size. The Expo included an academic seminar as well as demonstration of actual military equipment that ROKA mainly used.

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Sowing Seeds

Through articles, images, survey data and interviews, Sowing Seeds: The Militarisation of Youth and How to Counter It documents the seeds of war that are planted in the minds of young people in many different countries. However, it also explores the seeds of resistance to this militarisation that are being sown resiliently and creatively by numerous people. READ MORE